I was most interested by the narrative aspect of depicting time; from Galileo’s moons to the graphical train schedules, each diagram tells a story about the intended or normal operation of movement over time. In “flatland,” all moments are simultaneous—all continuous and reliant on the previous moment’s accuracy. (Obviously more true for planes and trains than, say, moons…) How does narrative storytelling enhance the authority of these designs? The “visual instant” as Tufte calls it includes many normative assumptions, most strikingly to me in the example of the dance step diagram: prescritpions of correct movement and timing are present, but so are prescriptions for dress, for the gender presentation of the two partners, of how to wear your hair and hold your body. Clearly many of those prescriptions are outdated, but it made me wonder, what other subtle prescriptions and ideologies are baked into graphical representations of time? Or instance, the efficiency and expedience of the train schedule prescribes that one should move between metropolitan areas, rather than any other kind, and move with the greatest speed possible toward another urban center, thus establishing priorities of time and emphasizing cities as areas of activity and movement.